Just finished reading Byrne's "The Man of Steel"

[adkal]

With Supes, it was only Grant Morrison's New 52 Action Comics run that gave an explanation for Superman's ocular powers. He said that Superman emitted microwaves from his eyes and that was his heat vision. Before, he could do it because he's Superman.

Byrne provided an explanation for heat vision, too. It was in Action Comics, I think, when he was going through the team-up stories and had Supes interacting with the GLC. One of the GL's observed Kal's heat vision and theorised that it was a combination of Kal's vision powers (I can't recall the exact wording) and that Kal was agitating the molecules (via telekinesis).

I'll try to pull up the issue later today or something.

[Jim Kelly]

With Supes, it was only Grant Morrison's New 52 Action Comics run that gave an explanation for Superman's ocular powers. He said that Superman emitted microwaves from his eyes and that was his heat vision. Before, he could do it because he's Superman.

In the early '40s, Superman displays a power to see through things by staring through them intently. This is called X-ray vision. By the early '50s, Superman is using the X-rays from his eyes to heat things. Eventually, the two vision powers are separate things--X-ray vision and heat vision--and Superman displays many other vision powers like infra-red vision.

Does Morrison or Byrne explain how the light comes out through Superman's eyes? This is the thing that I think is a big change in Superman. Because the other vision powers are passive--Superman has high functioning eyes and a brain, that can process a greater amount of the spectrum than we can (plus seeing further and magnifying what he sees). But emitting X-rays or any other rays from his eyes is a very different thing.

And why do they come out through his eyes? That seems like a strange channel for light to come out of--it's hard to understand how that could even happen. If you were going to emit light from your body, you'd think there'd be some other organ than the eyes which are so sensitive to light. Why doesn't Superman spit light out from his mouth or blow it out through his nose?

[Grim Ghost]

I don't think Man of Steel or the Byrne reboot in general has aged very well, but at the time they were a breath of fresh air. The art was great for sure. I'm not the biggest fan of Byrne as a writer and kind of felt like he threw out the baby with the bathwater with a lot of stuff he removed from the Superman mythos.

On the TK stuff and the idea of Superman's flying helping him lift things, etc....eh I don't really care for it. It just over complicates things I think. Super strong characters in comics do that sort of stuff all the time and I never lost any sleep worrying about why stuff wasn't crumbling apart or whatever, haha.

[BeefBourguignon]

Has anything from 1986 aged well?

[adkal]

Does Morrison or Byrne explain how the light comes out through Superman's eyes? This is the thing that I think is a big change in Superman. Because the other vision powers are passive--Superman has high functioning eyes and a brain, that can process a greater amount of the spectrum than we can (plus seeing further and magnifying what he sees). But emitting X-rays or any other rays from his eyes is a very different thing.

I don't think Morrison goes into detail - in issue 2, he has Clark say: 'I look just like everybody else. Except my eyes don't just absorb radiation like yours do, they emit all kinds', but I don't think he expands beyond that in his run.

Byrne has the 'telekinetic agitation' for heat vision and, for x-ray, it's more a microscopic-vision and then expand on the other side kind of thing.

Here's Salaak's analysis of Superman's heat vision, from Action Comics 589:

Salaak - Action 589.jpg

[Jokerz79]

Has anything from 1986 aged well?

While I love all versions of Krypton as a Sci-Fi fan I feel the John Byrne version has aged best even compared to the current version. All other versions while fun and interesting do have a serial Buck Rogers vibe.

[Grim Ghost]

Has anything from 1986 aged well?

I'd say plenty has, but it's all a matter of opinion

[Francisco]

While I love all versions of Krypton as a Sci-Fi fan I feel the John Byrne version has aged best even compared to the current version. All other versions while fun and interesting do have a serial Buck Rogers vibe.

And I think/feel that Buck Rogers vibe is awesome and more Supermanlike than Byrne's. But if I had it my way Krypton would be a mixture of both concepts. Just like our world Krypton can be a multicultural world. Lara and Jor El would work just fine as members of different cultural factions within Kryptonian civilization.

[Jokerz79]

And I think/feel that Buck Rogers vibe is awesome and more Supermanlike than Byrne's. But if I had it my way Krypton would be a mixture of both concepts. Just like our world Krypton can be a multicultural world. Lara and Jor El would work just fine as members of different cultural factions within Kryptonian civilization.

I said I love them all and just I feel Byrne's is the less dated version. I also posted in a Thread I created about Superman's origin I like a hybrid approach to Krypton mixing elements from all eras.

[Adekis]

While I love all versions of Krypton as a Sci-Fi fan I feel the John Byrne version has aged best even compared to the current version. All other versions while fun and interesting do have a serial Buck Rogers vibe.

Definitely true to a certain extent, but I don't think it's entirely the case. I recently reread the Tales from the Phantom Zone trade and then Gerber's Phantom Zone miniseries in succession, and while I feel pretty comfortable writing off a lot of the pre-Crisis Krypton as Flash Gordon stuff (though frankly I love Flash Gordon), I think the difference between a sixties Krypton story and a mid 80s Krypton story illustrates that the world, with its relatively vast and detailed lore, was worth keeping around. It definitely developed in a more complex direction, even using the same themes from the earlier stories.

As for Byrne's Krypton, I love how it feels alien and not just like "utopian future America" (whereas at times the Silver Age Krypton is indistinguishable from the 30th Century Superboy would jet off to), but what I heavily dislike about it is the xenophobic instinct Byrne gives Clark to say "F#CK Krypton! I'm practically fortunate it blew up!"

If you've ever seen The Death of Superman Lives, Tim Burton's Krypton sounds like it was going to combine the best of both worlds. Burton's Krypton seemed like it'd be appropriately bizarre and alien, but at the same time, Superman felt a tremendous sense of loss over it like in pre-Crisis world, like he'd really missed out on being part of something special. There's a lot of weird elements to that unmade movie and we'll never know exactly how they'd have played out in practice, but I feel like Burton really "got" the sense of loss and alienation that Clark sometimes feels, which Byrne completely dumped. Seems like my idea of a perfect middle ground.

[Kuwagaton]

I think the idea that Superman came away with any negativity toward Krypton or being Kryptonian is the largest and most unfortunate misconception in the modern mythos. It never was Byrne's intention and has been plainly refuted in-story. Dude crossed into a planet sized stream of Kryptonite to find remnants.

[Jim Kelly]

While there's lots of John Byrne stories that I like (at Marvel and DC), as a witer he's prosaic--where the writers for Weisinger, Schiff and Schwartz were poetic. What I mean is Byrne tries to make everything make sense in a straightforward way, but that's not very inspiriing. When he does science fiction it's this pedantic science fiction--you can almost see his finger wagging. See, see, this is what's wrong with science, kids! Whereas, the pre-Crisis writers are making imaginative leaps. It's not straghtforward. It doesn't make sense according to strict logic, but it makes sense to us in the same way dream makes sense--there's some kind of weird truth that registers with us deep in our unconscious.

[Adekis]

I think the idea that Superman came away with any negativity toward Krypton or being Kryptonian is the largest and most unfortunate misconception in the modern mythos. It never was Byrne's intention and has been plainly refuted in-story. Dude crossed into a planet sized stream of Kryptonite to find remnants.

That's a pretty good point, but I've got a few refutations. First of all, I'm not convinced that there's an exact equivalence between how the books and the writing portray Krypton and how Clark thinks about it, though there's definitely some overlap. In Man of Steel # 6, Jor-El basically mind-rapes Clark with unwanted knowledge of Krypton and Jon saves his son from losing his humanity over it by smacking Jor's hologram with a shovel. It's not like Clark cared enough to research into his homeworld like in other later versions like Superman and the Men of Steel and Birthright, he's invaded and attacked by Krypton. Then where the Birthright Kal would have been delighted he's learned all there is to know about Krypton in an instant, Byrne's Clark explicitly says that the knowledge of Krypton is "ultimately meaningless" and that he'll only ever regard it as a "curious memento", because Earth is "all that matters". That's not negativity to Krypton on Clark's part, and in retrospect it was wrong of me to exaggerate his reaction as "F#CK Krypton!" earlier. Either way though, I think it's important to note that Clark's reaction is much less hostile than the way the narrative presents Krypton in an inhuman, if not villainous light. I will admit though that Clark's response to Krypton gets more curious and more positive over time- but that the narrative's doesn't.

That negativity of the narrative carries over into the story you mentioned from Superman # 18. Yes, Clark is willing to dive into Krypton's remnants to look for anything worth finding, but in the end, what does he get? A hallucination of a story which plainly states that had Krypton survived its destruction, it'd have inherently become a race of tyrants. Sure, there's the argument that the corruption applies to anyone powerful, but in other Krypton versions there's a sense of a kind of Kryptonian morality, that this race has lived so long and been peaceful for so long that it's immune to that kind of thing, Phantom Zoners excepted. Krypton-death's necessity isn't the only thing Clark gets from his trip though- he also gets an anti-Kryptonite formula that doesn't work, and decides that that's for the best. In other word's, Krypton's sole worth is its ability to kill him, which keeps him human somehow, not that he was having trouble with being inhuman before.

Going back to Man of Steel briefly, Jon smacking Jor with a shovel to save Clark from Krypton's toxic influence is a powerful image, powerful enough that they brought it back during Return of Superman in Adventures of Superman # 500. Now that story sure wasn't Byrne, but I think it illustrates my overall point about how strongly Byrne's (perhaps unintentional) Kryptonophobia was transmitted to future writers. Clark's interest in and tolerance of Krypton has increased with time, to the point that he willingly takes part in a Kryptonian funeral rite and tries to cast aside his humanity (symbolized by his "Clark Kent" outfit turning to tatters). Jon saves Clark and his emotions and helps him back to the land of the living with the power of Love, which Byrne's Krypton literally didn't have a word for. Sure, the Kryptonian rite in the issue was really a show put on by demons, but again, Clark was susceptible to demonic attack due to his Kryptonian side, where Jon literally met a major devil and basically spits in her face without thinking about it. He wasn't even really susceptible to the demons, but Clark only gets his normal force of will back once Jon destroys the Jor-El construct with an astral shovel! It's not Byrne, but it is his legacy.

None of which is to say that I dislike these issues, by the way. There's a certain extent to which Krypton could stand to be problematized from its idyllic pre-Crisis self. I do think that the post-Crisis era went too far in the other direction, but I still enjoy all these stories, and especially the fact that they took place in DCU where they could do a blink-and-miss-it callback to a story from seven whole years earlier!

EDIT: Also, I really like your new avatar!

[Kuwagaton]

In Man of Steel # 6, Jor-El basically mind-rapes Clark with unwanted knowledge of Krypton and Jon saves his son from losing his humanity over it by smacking Jor's hologram with a shovel. It's not like Clark cared enough to research into his homeworld like in other later versions like Superman and the Men of Steel and Birthright, he's invaded and attacked by Krypton.

It's not what he didn't want to learn. Birthright Clark wanted to learn, but he didn't consent to the method either, being bullied by Luthor. That didn't make what he learned a bad thing, though. In MoS itself he admits to having been curious and skirting around the information because he really had no means of actually finding out. Later writers would expand this to the likes of Year One, a comic where he goes hunting down his birthright. Written by people who are (or were) friends of Byrne, I can't imagine that eight years later they sought out to correct his work by way of contradiction so much as expand on it. Same thing with how, for some reason, people say Byrne had him drop out of high school although that never comes up once in the mini and Byrne eventually shows Clark in college. Loeb giving him a graduation scene was a supplement instead of a contradiction.

I agree with Jim Kelly that Byrne has a signature bent, like most writers we can distinctly recall. His "antiseptic" Krypton is so fitting because it's really like a way to see his style of writing. But it's rather uncomplicated and accessible (which lends to a dated feeling), although I can't dismiss whatever amount of subtext is argued. Like any writing, it is a victim of what we choose to see in it. Yes, Pa "saves his humanity," but Clark also says that the projection was damaged, meaning that there was something wrong with it. As far as how he takes the data compare to other versions, MoS Clark is completed in a short burst. I understand that Mark Waid did it for dramatic tension, but he still had Krypton used as a weapon against an unknowing Superman. He has to defend it and himself armed with little but his heart and a few downloaded images given to him. There's a charm involved, but he's ultimately pretty clueless in comparison and having Superman first officially hear of Krypton through a mocking Luthor just didn't feel right to me. No one could do that post MoS, where Clark could speak Krypton's various dialects and even quote his father from memory. Morrison did a great job of still using a villain for the dramatic revelation, although that Superman still had the luxury of live memories. Seeing a Krypton that looks more like what our culture deems to be good and having first-hand experience would inform him in a way he couldn't be informed by receiving borrowed memories.

Byrne's Clark explicitly says that the knowledge of Krypton is "ultimately meaningless" and that he'll only ever regard it as a "curious memento", because Earth is "all that matters".

Earth isn't all that matters, knowing the person he'd been for his whole life is all that matters. I'm not sure that if he did in fact find out he was Russian, he'd suddenly care and start doing stereotypical Russian things. It'd be easier to celebrate of course, since Russia and its people were still in existence. Also, the "curious memento" is something he'd "cherish always." There's an emphasis there, I think.

the narrative presents Krypton in an inhuman, if not villainous light. I will admit though that Clark's response to Krypton gets more curious and more positive over time- but that the narrative's doesn't.

That negativity of the narrative carries over into the story you mentioned from Superman # 18. Yes, Clark is willing to dive into Krypton's remnants to look for anything worth finding, but in the end, what does he get? A hallucination of a story which plainly states that had Krypton survived its destruction, it'd have inherently become a race of tyrants. Sure, there's the argument that the corruption applies to anyone powerful, but in other Krypton versions there's a sense of a kind of Kryptonian morality, that this race has lived so long and been peaceful for so long that it's immune to that kind of thing, Phantom Zoners excepted. Krypton-death's necessity isn't the only thing Clark gets from his trip though- he also gets an anti-Kryptonite formula that doesn't work, and decides that that's for the best. In other word's, Krypton's sole worth is its ability to kill him, which keeps him human somehow, not that he was having trouble with being inhuman before.

Byrne's Krypton is not unlike an actual culture that might be vilified for being different. There are plenty of customs and traditions that people find barbaric and don't understand right here, but our lack of understanding or experience with them does not make them villainous. That the planet Krypton doesn't resemble Earth is on top of all that a priority considering how Byrne tends to approach these things.

The story of what Superman learns there is repeated in the later four parter also called Return to Krypton. Superman has his romantic notion not shattered, but merely met by the reality that Kryptonians aren't above mankind. Not worse, but not above. There's no implication that a race of humans wouldn't be the same way with Kryptonian powers. Especially when we consider the romanticism of brutal ages like those found in Greece, England, Italy, and Japan. Clark isn't really naive enough to be shocked, but he's optimistic. Like a guy who time travels back to the 50s expecting to meet the cleavers and ends up with an earful of racial epithets.

The Kryptonite serum is just a bit thrown in where Superman takes a rather disappointing situation and decides to see good in it.

Also, I really like your new avatar!

Thanks. I think Barreto was just fantastic.